While there we took thousands of reference photos every day for use in future projects - but aside from the occasional random photo we posted straight from the show floor, we didn't do much detailed reporting on what was really a very exciting trip for us.

Although everyone was very busy after returning to Prague, we always thought that it would be nice to sift through the footage and make a wrap-up report from our time at MATS, but there was always some higher priority task to handle first. Finally though, with the help of some friends, we managed to create a short compilation of video footage from the trip:

Now we're asking - would you be interested in seeing more from the show floor? This may not be the best platform for it but we could definitely select a hundred or two interesting photos from the trip and publish them, for example, on the American Truck Simulator facebook page. Let us know!

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

If you've ever been to a truck show, you would be blown away by the love and dedication some truckers devote to their trucks. The effort they put into their vehicles is unbelievable - tons of chrome, hand-made parts, lights and paint jobs - these truckers take a regular truck and turn in it into a work of art!

We have decided to turn our observations from European truck shows into some cool new stuff to help players pimp out two of ETS2's most popular trucks. A new batch of gorgeous tuning content is joining our roster, made especially for the truckers who keep a griffin in their heart!

The Mighty Griffin DLC is joining our Steam roster today. It will enhance your tuning sets for the Scania R and Scania Streamline with dozens of new parts for both interior and exterior decoration...

Chassis covers, rear bumpers, exhausts, front masks and grilles, stone guards, bull bars, front and rear mudflaps, wheel hubs, door and window trims, paint jobs, front badges, and various cabin accessories like curtains, mugs, LED logos, a dashboard table - The Mighty Griffin DLC will help you make your Scania truck look like the king of the road!

Monday, June 27, 2016

Early in June, we announced a little event on World of Trucks, asking you to deliver three online jobs and promising a free key for the new National Flags DLC as a reward. Now that the event has come to a close, we'd like to share with you a few statistics that we have compiled from it.

The World of Trucks project is still in its infancy, so we were really happy to see the level of interest that you guys and girls showed. We were honestly pleased to give away even more activation codes than we had anticipated. The infographic below shows some interesting numbers about the event:

As a side note, we've noticed that some of you have earned a key but haven't redeemed it yet. If you want to check that you are not missing out, log in to www.worldoftrucks.com, choose "My Page" and go to "Events." If you have an unredeemed key, there will be a message waiting for you there. And, of course, if you missed the chance to earn the National Window Flags DLC key for free, it's available for purchase on Steam.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

We're very excited to make a big announcement, but first we need to give you a little backstory. Back when we were beginning research work on American Truck Simulator, just a few months after the release of Euro Truck Simulator 2, SCS Software was a team of about 20 people. We made, and kept, a commitment to actively support and expand ETS2, so the core team on the ATS project at that
point was just a handful of developers. We hoped that some day the team would grow to be a modest 8-10 people large. They were facing a monumental challenge in trying to portray the continent of North America on a reasonable scale within a feasible time frame.

The new Golden Gate Bridge. Notice anything different?

Fortunately American Truck Simulator started strong out of the gate, and we are now confident that its sales can sustain an even larger development team than we originally hoped for. SCS Software has since more than doubled in size, and we are in the process of hiring even more map designers and 3D artists. Looking at what we have created so far, and considering all the feedback we've gotten from our fans, we are at an intersection: we can either accept things as they are and continue building the world as is, or we can take a step back and change things before it's too late. It's either now or never, as the more of the world we build, the less likely we are going to be able to make major changes.

New U.S. Route 101 tunnel

Having said all that, perhaps the greatest number of complaints from the players of American Truck Simulator have been related to the scale of the map. Your comments are incredibly important to us, and we listen to as many as we can.
As such, we had been pondering internally how to meet your feedback for several months while we finished work on the Arizona DLC, and now we have made up our mind: we are, as a free future update, going to increase the scale of the game world of American Truck Simulator. This update will have many clear benefits for you, such as:

Retouching the existing system of roads and intersections and revisiting the placement of cities and crossroads

Focusing on a better sense of scale and distance, more space for large vistas

Adjusting the timescale - meaning a slower day/night cycle and longer intervals between when the driver needs to rest and refuel

Revamping problematic junctions - no more Interstate intersections!

Revamping the driver experience system to more closely mirror ETS2's system

More room for densely populated areas in future map expansions

This compares the size of California, Nevada and Arizona before the rescale and after it

The new scale is equivalent to that of Euro Truck Simulator 2, so the flow of time in both games will be the same. There is also more room now to go back and improve some of the places that were compromised due to the limited scale and replace them with more realistic depictions.

The benefits are clear - you're going to get a free "take 2" on the West-coast states that you already have in the game, and roomier game world for future expansions. In addition, this expansion will come with new road segments to explore and updated technology for the old roads.

There is one thing that we need from you though - patience. It will take several months to re-scale the existing world before we can move on to building completely new areas and DLC. The map designers are in fact hard at work already on the re-scaling project. To help reduce the turn around time of new state DLC during this renovation, a large part of the 3D assets team is working on vegetation, buildings, landmarks, and any new prefabs we need for new state DLC. And in the middle of all of this, our hope is to grow the company enough to have two map designer teams working in parallel on growing North America both Northward and Eastward at the same time.

Map showing the road segments which will be added during the rescale process.

We are very excited for this expansion and feel strongly that it is in everyone's best interest. You get more compatibility, new content, and better modding technology for free, and we get the space to expand the North American continent into the truly majestic landscape that it is.
This is the right step to take for the health of the game and its community in the long term - two, three, even five years into the future. We hope that enough of our fans will have the patience to stay with us. It's your continued support that makes our games what they are, and what we do worth doing.

The junction of U.S. Route 101 and State Route 58 before the rescale (left) and after (right)

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Euro Truck Simulator 2 has a lot of fans outside of Europe. More than we have expected when we released the game actually. For example on Steam we can see that 39% of revenue is coming from outside of what would be the natural target region for a Europe-focused product (Western and Eastern Europe including Russia).

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Over 40,000 of you have already gotten the National Window Flags DLC! Color us impressed!

For those of you who found out late about our event where you can get the DLC for free, don't worry so much. You're in no hurry - due to multiple requests and a really high level of interest, we've decided to prolong the event by another week! The new end date is June 22nd, at 23:59 CET.

As a reminder, in order to get the National Windows Flags DLC for free you need to deliver three (3) World of Trucks contracts in Euro Truck Simulator 2 before the posted deadline. To
avoid cheating the system by taking extremely trivial jobs, each contract must be at least a minimum distance of 200 km (125 miles) (ferry segments don't count!).

Monday, June 13, 2016

While, of course, the eyes of European football fans everywhere are fixated on France these days we have our own reasons to focus on the country and its geography. We would like to show you a few more screen shots from the upcoming Vive La France DLC that's under construction.

The map team is paying a tremendous amount of attention to detail to the road network, and it shows. In this particular case we can demonstrate several new roundabouts. As you can see below they don't have to have the island filled with just boring grass or shrubs. Our artists picked a few of the unique and scenic ones from the real world and brought them to life in our game.

Speaking of sports fans and France, over 22 thousand people already earned a key to the National Window Flags DLC in recent days. Have you gotten yours to celebrate your team's success? The flags may come in handy not just to Europeans currently obsessing about Euro Cup 2016, as we have realized that Copa América is taking place at the same time! More details here.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

There are special occasions when a proper sports fan simply must root for their team. We thought it would be cool if it was also possible inside the world of Euro Truck Simulator 2. So here we are, bringing you a new cosmetic option to decorate your vehicle with a flying national flag. The timing is not a coincidence, as fans of football especially in Europe will no doubt understand.

We are happy to announce the release of National Window Flags DLC for ETS2. The package features hundreds of national flags, so pretty much everybody on the planet should be able to find their own. This type of decoration is not something for everyday use, but it may be quite handy during special days, like national holidays or major sports events.

To promote our recently improved external contracts on World of Trucks, we are offering you a time-limited chance to earn an activation key for this new DLC without having to pay a single cent. Here is the deal:

Between today June 8th and June 15th 2016 midnight CET, June 22nd, at 23:59 CET, deliver three (3) World of Trucks contracts in Euro Truck Simulator. To avoid cheating with extremely trivial jobs, each contract must be over a minimum distance of 200 km (125 miles) (segments on a ferry are not counted!).

We will be dispensing the keys in batches once a day, so after completing the required number of jobs, you may have to wait for up to 24 hours before receiving a message through the World of Trucks system with the activation key. Thank you for your patience.

For maximum effect, it is possible to combine the flags together with other dedicated tuning DLCs like unique flag-inspired cabin paint jobs or colorable wheel tuning pack to get cool combinations like the ones below:

Monday, June 6, 2016

We are happy to announce that we are releasing Arizona DLC for American Truck Simulator today.

Discover 15 new cities, admire Colorado River with The Grand Canyon, and explore a section of the famous Route 66!

As promised back in January, the map expansion is automatically unlocked for all owners of the game for free, no matter where or when you have bought it.

We would like to thank all the participants of the Open Beta for their feedback. It was very helpful for us, especially the stress and functional tests of World of Trucks improvements, and the help with ironing out the many little details in Arizona!

Both American Truck Sim as well as Euro Truck Simulator 2 Updated

There is good news for owners of both of our flagship truck sim games - they are getting a bunch of new features as a part of a new game update coming out today, too.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Our quest to cover more of the countries where Euro Truck Simulator 2 has a sizable fan base continues today. This time we are paying tribute to Spain with a new Spanish paint job DLC pack!

PS: quite a big behind-the-scenes switch in the server infrastructure of World of Trucks is going to be happening later today, we may need to go into maintenance mode for a few hours to migrate all of the data to the new cloud. Please have patience during the change.

SCS Software

Take a look under the hood! SCS Software - makers of vehicle simulation games including 18 Wheels of Steel Series, Bus Driver, and Euro Truck Simulator. Currently working hard on Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator.